Archive of Our Own ^beta

“I really want to show off and prove that I’m better than Utahime-sensei, so you guys have to be on your best behavior, alright?”

The atmosphere in any airport is generally not one of good behavior, but in the Kyoto International Airport, it’s downright poisonous. For one thing, it’s seven AM, and the good students of Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu Technical College have been up since four. The actual plane ride itself was unpleasant and turbulent. Irritatingly, their teacher declined, saying that he was going to head up early and take the bullet train instead. Why none of them could take the train with him instead of this whole rigamarole is a mystery on par with the Six Eyes.

Apparently, that didn’t get the reaction he wanted, because Gojo clears his throat loudly and claps his hands together. 

“Alright?” he repeats, with even more energy than the first time. The students grumble out various affirmatives. “Yay! Okay, good job! Don’t disappoint me! Especially not my cute debuting students who haven’t done this before. It’d be really embarrassing if I tossed you guys in and you lost badly, huh?”

The cute debuting students blink at one another. 

Well—Kirara wishes that Gojo would really differentiate between the first years and second years, because they’re in completely different situations! She and Kinji sat on the bench last year, and have been preparing as jujutsu sorcerers for this exact moment. They’ve earned their spot in the exchange event. That first year on the other hand…

She doesn’t even like to look at him. He’s gotten slightly better at controlling that sickening cursed energy of his, but only slightly. She gets that he’s one of the only special grades alive, but shouldn’t he have to wait his turn, too?

“Of course, Gojo-sensei!” Okkotsu squeaks, tapping his hand with a fist in a weak approximation of a cheery gesture. Kirara and Kinji roll their eyes in unison—which Gojo sees, because of course he does.

“You two, too!” He snaps his fingers at them, making a strange, swooping gesture with his hand. “In fact, I need you two to be the most enthusiastic and ready out of everyone here. Utahime’s second years are supposed to be crazy good, so you’ve gotta show off, too. If you don’t, I’ll really cry.”

And he really would do it.

“Of course,” Kirara says, trying to match that level of energy and failing. She barely slept from anticipation, and on top of the flight, it’s really starting to catch up to her. 

“Yeah, yeah. We’re not gonna embarrass you, jeez,” Hakari adds in a mumble.

“Ah! What did I say about your best behavior!?”

“This is his best behavior,” Kirara explains, putting her hand on Kinji’s shoulder. “He’s really being restrained.”

“Well, restrain him more!” Gojo huffs, putting his hands on his hips. “Yuta, keep an eye on these two. They’re troublemakers together.”

“Huh? Me?” Okkotsu scratches his cheek a little nervously. “Okay…?”

“And you two, keep an eye on Yuta and Rika-chan. Don’t let things get too out of control.”

“I don’t think we’ll have much of a chance if he lets things get out of control,” Kinji sighs.

“You might think of him as your little kouhai, but remember that he’s the same age as you guys because he got held back in school,” Gojo explains, which is actual useful information that he immediately tempers with more irrelevant weirdness. “He’s really sensitive about it, though, so don’t tease him.”

“I’m not, actually…”

“Alright! Remember: best behavior, do your best. If you win, the event will be in Tokyo next year, and so we won’t have to travel.” Gojo turns with exaggerated movements to head off to the terminal’s exit, like a proud duck leading a host of wayward ducklings. “Take that as an incentive if you have to!”

Kirara rolls her eyes again.

“They were saying that the Kyoto second years are supposed to be pretty strong. Well—one of them, at least. This is their first exchange event, too, so they’re also going to try and show off,” Hakari says, hands in his pockets.

The Kyoto campus is an imperfect mirror of Tokyo, with many of the same serene ponds and shrines, all protected by Master Tengen from all the way back at the other school. It shifts and breathes like their home campus does. A storm hovers overhead as they trek through the gravel paths to try and find where Gojo told them to reconvene. It’s difficult, and it feels as though they’re all being watched. Kirara also has her hands in her pockets, tracing out the shape of the Southern Cross on her leg.

“Strong how?” Okkotsu wonders. He’s still fucking here. Apparently, he took Gojo’s comment to watch over them very, very seriously.

“One of them is already a first-grade, which is basically crazy. They don’t hand that shit out for free.” Kinji scratches his chin. He’s been trying to grow out his facial hair lately, but it’s not been all too successful thus far. Kirara tells him it makes him look sexy, but even she would have to admit under threat of perjury that it’s pretty bad.

“Right,” Okkotsu says, nodding like he didn’t get his grade handed to him for free.

“And one of them is a Kamo,” Kinji adds.

“Shit. Really?” Kirara asks, wide eyes going even wider.

“Ah, what does that mean?”

“They haven’t told you about the clans yet?” Kirara asks in disbelief, looking back at Okkotsu. On the narrow paths, two people can just barely walk side by side. Naturally, he’s the odd one out.

“Oh! Oh, right.” Okkotsu pulls nervously at a strand of his hair. “...That’s one of them, then?”

“They haven’t told you!” Kirara gasps.

“No! They told me! It’s just that I only remember Gojo, because of Gojo-sensei, and Zen’in, because of Maki-san. Oh, I guess Inumaki, too.”

“The Inumakis basically don’t exist,” Kinji says dismissively. “The one you gotta know is Kamo. Well, everyone is kinda under the Gojos right now, but the Kamos have been around forever, and they would probably be the ones in charge if that idiot teacher wasn’t around.”

“They’re in trouble, though,” Kirara points out. “Like, two hundred years ago or something, the clan head did a bunch of messed up jujutsu experimentation. It was totally fucked. So I think they still get shit for that, even though he’s been dead basically forever.”

“Oh, yeah, true,” Kinji agrees. “Anyways, there’s a Kamo in the second-year class.”

“Do they have a technique like the Gojo clan does?” Okkotsu asks, tilting his head.

“Yeah, but they’re all pretty touchy about sharing trade secrets and shit. It’s something about blood.”

“They can take all the blood out of your body,” Kirara adds, nodding. “All they have to do is touch you. So watch out.”

“Like vampires,” Hakari says.

They look back in unison to see Okkotsu’s already pale face go even paler, as if the blood in his body knows that it’s being threatened and is retreating appropriately.

“C’mon, we’re just messing with you,” Kirara says encouragingly, before walking directly into a metal wall.

Well, that’ll teach her not to walk without seeing where she’s going. She steps back with a huff, the wind almost getting knocked out of her, and is ready to protest the sudden appearance of a metal wall in the very calm nature-surrounded path (totally immersion breaking) when she realizes that it isn’t a wall at all. Kinji, who was already squared up to fight whatever it was, sees it at the same time she does.

“A robot?” he asks, thoroughly disbelieving.

It is a robot, only because Kirara doesn’t have any other words for it. It’s wearing a uniform similar to theirs, like a creepy mannequin showing off the fit and style of the sleek shirt and pants that they all wear variations of, though it has a funny scarf on that kind of ruins the effect.

“Kin, you didn’t say they had a robot!” Kirara whispers, hiding behind her classmate with unashamed cowardice.

“A robot!?” Okkotsu echoes, hiding behind Kirara.

The robot tilts its head, and emits a static sound like a sigh. Its jaw moves with the motion, as if it were actually breathing, but it can’t be. Right?

“Can you stop that?” it says, plainly exhausted. Okkotsu yelps, even though the voice isn’t all that scary.

“Ooh, it’s like the Arnold movie,” Kirara whispers again.

“Predator?” Hakari answers.

“No, no. The other one.”

“Commando...”

“No!”

“I told you to stop it,” the robot says, shoulders slumping. “And can you get out of the way, please?”

“Mechamaru!” a voice calls behind it, and two other figures jog up, shoes skidding in the gravel.

These ones are thankfully human—or seem that way, at least. The shorter one of the two isn’t in the same school uniform as them: she’s in a full suit and tie, like some kind of little salaryman. Or a manager, Kirara realizes, but she doesn’t seem old enough. She looks like she’s twelve. The blue hair is a nice touch, one that Kirara is jealous of; it looks remarkably natural, no roots showing or anything. (She’s only ever chickened out of dyeing hers. It’d be a waste.)

The other one is in a more standard uniform, with the wide collar and long sleeves that everyone wears (unless they’ve had modifications, which seems to be the case with basically all of the other students, she’s realizing). She’s the one who called out, and something about her voice in concert with her appearance…it strikes Kirara in a strange way. It’s oddly familiar, even though all of these people are complete strangers.

“Oh,” that familiar-but-not girl sighs, crossing her arms. “I forgot the Tokyo rejects were coming in this early.”

“Mai, be nice…” the other girl chastises, sighing.

“They really, really didn’t tell us there was a robot here,” Kinji says, tilting his head to mirror the thing.

“That’s not a robot, moron. It’s just Mechamaru.”

“Mai!”

“Mechamaru?” Kirara echoes, reaching out to poke its chest. She yelps when it grabs her wrist, as quick as a flash. 

“Please don’t do that—sorry,” it says stiffly, letting go.

“He’s just a student like you or me,” the taller girl scoffs. “Well…maybe not like you, actually. It doesn’t seem like any of you are smart enough to actually be in school, but they’ll give the uniform to anyone in Tokyo.”

“Oh!” Yuta brightens, after being lost in thought for some time. “You must be Maki’s sister!”

Kirara looks back at her—Mai—with renewed scrutiny, and begins to see it, at first slowly and then all at once. Mai growing steadily more annoyed in a matter of seconds only helps things along even quicker.

“Oh, right,” Kirara says, nodding. “I forgot that there’s another one.”

“What do you mean he’s Mechamaru?” Kinji asks.

“What it sounds like,” the robot called Mechamaru says coolly. 

“Um! Hello!” the other girl pipes up, squeezing into view from behind Mechamaru. (Like Okkotsu, she was relegated to standing behind everyone else). “It’s really nice to meet you guys! I’m Miwa Kasumi! I like nikujaga and spending my money frugally!” She bows.

“So they’re all weirdos,” Kirara murmurs, standing on tiptoes to stage whisper into Hakari’s ear.

“I’m pretty average, actually!”

“Well, I’m Hoshi Kirara,” she sighs, settling back down onto her feet. “This is Hakari Kinji, and the other guy is—”

“We can tell who he is,” Mai mutters darkly. She’s evidently not recovered from being compared to Maki, which Kirara can understand. Between the two sisters, it doesn’t exactly work in Mai’s favor.

“We’re competing in the exchange event,” Okkotsu says, holding his fingers together and leaning around Kirara to speak. “Are you guys here for that, too?”

“First years don’t compete,” Mechamaru says. 

“Well, I’m a first year…”

“Special case. The numbers didn’t add up otherwise, since they have one more second year than us,” Kirara explains.

“Oh, so you’re the second years, then!” Miwa Kasumi brightens considerably. “Kusakabe-sensei is your teacher, right?”

“You know him?”

“He got me to come to school here! Though it was kind of sad that I couldn’t get taught by him directly…” Miwa sighs, before shaking her head. “Is he here?”

“Nah,” Kinji answers. “Said he had a mission to do.”

“He’s really admirable in that way.”

“Can you please get out of the way?” Mechamaru asks, managing to sound exhausted even through his tinny voicebox. 

“You have to be more direct with meatheads like these guys,” Mai tells him. “Punch the little one to really teach him a lesson.”

“I’m not doing that.”

“We’ll get out of your way!” Okkotsu says, voice cracking as he obligingly steps off the path and into the mossy dirt around it. “C’mon, guys, let’s get out of the way.”

“That one is the special grade?” Mai says disparagingly. 

“Do you think you can get away with talking to me like that?” Hakari demands, starting to unbutton his sleeves to push them up his arms.

“I said please,” Mechamaru notes.

“Nah, let’s hear what your girlfriend has to say to me. Meathead, huh?”

“You’re not proving me wrong,” Mai says.

“I never used to believe in hitting girls,” Hakari declares, “but, y’know, times are changing.”

“Wait, wait, wait—” Miwa windmills her arms, trying to get between the Tokyo and Kyoto groups. “No! Nobody’s hitting anybody! This is supposed to be an exchange event!”

“I’ll exchange something with him, alright,” Mai says, reaching into her jacket.

“Mai!”

This time, the call comes from behind the Tokyo students, on the path from where they came from. Iori Utahime, elegant and graceful and completely pissed, is being trailed by a remarkably quiet Gojo. She claps her hands, loud and sharp.

“Utahime-sensei!” Miwa gasps, grateful at once.

“Mai, what are you doing?” Utahime chides, crossing her arms. She seems less surprised than she is plain disappointed, like this isn’t the first time she’s run into this situation.

“I was being threatened by that loser,” Mai answers stiffly, removing her hand from where it was. “It’s basically fine.”

“Ah, which loser?” Gojo pipes up, mimicking Utahime’s pose and tone of voice. “Yuta, you’d better not be getting into trouble.”

“I’m not!” Okkotsu says, genuinely distressed at the accusation.

“It was these two,” Mechamaru notes, pointing two metal-jointed fingers at Kinji and Kirara.

“The robot is a snitch…” Kirara murmurs.

“I should’ve known,” Gojo sighs. “We were looking for you guys. I was worried you got lost in this backwards place.”

“This guy wouldn’t get out of the way,” Kinji says, gesturing right back at Mechamaru.

“The space prepared for your group is back that way,” Utahime answers, pointing her chin towards the path behind her. “Where were you guys going?”

“Oh, I thought we were going the wrong way!” Okkotsu says earnestly.

“And you didn’t say something?” Kirara asks.

“You guys were telling me about the Kyoto students! I was really listening!”

“Hey, isn’t that against the rules or something?” Mai objects, waving a hand in their direction. “Subterfuge? Spying?”

“It’s called strategy,” Kinji says.

“The only rule is to have fun!” Gojo says, making a heart with his finger and thumb.

“He’s more or less right,” Utahime sighs. It seems to take all of the energy out of her to agree with him. “The only rules are the ones specifically outlined in the events themselves. Strategizing is recommended.”

“Do Todo and them know about these dorks, then?” Mai asks, glancing at her classmates for an answer. Miwa shrugs. Mechamaru does, too.

“They probably wouldn’t say if they did know,” Okkotsu notes, which makes everyone glare at him.

“Anyways! We’re running out of time, so stop messing around with people who aren’t even in the event,” Gojo chastises, stepping behind them to grab Kirara and Hakari by their collars and shoo them back to where they came from. “You’ll get to see what they’re made of next year, so don’t worry about it!”

“That’s not the issue,” Kinji grumbles, but even he defers to Gojo in situations like this.

Okkotsu, both left behind and left a little lost, stares after them for a moment before glancing at the Kyoto class sheepishly, aware that he’s now on the hook for this whole debacle.

“It was really nice to meet all of you! I hope the sister school event is enjoyable for everyone!” he says, bowing his head before dashing off after his teacher and upperclassmen. Miwa does him the courtesy of bowing in return. Utahime sighs again.

“What were you guys even doing out here?” she scolds, doing the same as Gojo and waving them in the direction they came from.

“We were spying,” Mai answers. “Obviously.”

Despite all that talk about strategy and subterfuge, the Tokyo students’ plan is remarkably simple: let Rika-chan handle it. Gojo’s only caution to Okkotsu is to not go too crazy, haha, because if Rika fully manifests again, especially here in Principal Gakuganji’s backyard, the council will definitely execute him about it, but otherwise just do whatever. The rest of them are instructed to do all they can to funnel the Kyoto combatants towards Okkotsu and his fucked up curse, which Kirara can do handily. 

“Isn’t the actual point to exorcise a curse or something?” she asks, eyes trained on the trees around them.

“Yeah, but if all of them get knocked out, they can’t do it, so it’s easier to deal with them before going out to find it.” Hakari sighs. “Man, I can’t see fucking anything in this place. But we’d hear someone coming…”

The endless forest of Kyoto feels remarkably similar to the Tokyo campus, but just unfamiliar enough to disorient all of them. Homefield advantage really makes a difference. It must mean the students the previous year failed to win and bring the competition back to Tokyo, which is annoying. Kirara can’t remember who to blame. That Ino guy just graduated, she thinks, so probably him. He’s annoying, anyway.

Their initial approach to the strategy has been to fan out to find and then isolate the members of the opposing team. Theoretically, it’d be best for Kirara and Kinji to split up, but Kirara doesn’t have much firepower, and Kinji’s technique isn’t useful for movement. Together, they make a pretty perfect team. Everyone thinks so. Kirara can protect him better than anyone. Hakari, well—he does his best. She’d love him no matter what.

“They could have a technique that lets them move without being seen,” she warns. 

“Yeah, yeah. You and your big-ass eyes.” Kinji flicks her cheek, and she swats him away.

“You’re such an asshole. I’m trying to be serious!”

“We’re not even doing anything, remember?” He sighs, shaking his head. “Man, I hate that Okkotsu kid. If he wasn’t here, they’d all be talking about me.”

“Of course, Kin-chan,” Kirara agrees, indulgent. “I bet they probably still remember you from when we first got to school, at least.”

“Yeah, but then there’s that fucking second-year first-grade even still.”

“Ri—ight. What does he even do, anyways?”

“Dunno. We didn’t do enough spying, I guess.”

“Hm…well, it shouldn’t be a problem for me,” Kirara says, reaching up to pat Kinji’s back, the star of Ginan between his shoulderblades. “The Kamo is a bit scary.”

“Eh, we don’t have to take him out,” Hakari points out. “We just have to get him to Okkotsu. And if we can’t…” He makes a half-mudra with his hand.

“Totally. Well…” She frowns. “What about the other one?”

“What other one?”

“Okkotsu’s here because there’s only two of us and three of them, right? So who’s the third one?”

Above their heads, they hear the faint but unmistakable tone of a text notification.

First, they stare at one another in quiet disbelief, making sure that they weren’t the only one to hear it, before slowly, carefully looking up, eyes drawn to the gap in the trees where a shadow has settled, a little black spot against the clouds.

Their eyes have to adjust to see it, but there: the contours and shadows resolve themselves neatly into the shape of an honest-to-god flying broomstick, like something out of a fairytale. On it, sitting side-saddle (side-stick?), is a small girl with a round face and pigtails. She also has a modified uniform, Kirara realizes, annoyed. One hand steadies herself on the broom, and the other holds a smartphone that she taps out another text on, the whoosh of the sent message carrying clearly down to the ground. She smiles with satisfaction at it. Kirara feels something reflexive and ugly.

“They have a fucking witch?” Hakari asks in disbelief.

The witch jumps in surprise when she realizes she’s been seen, staring down at the two of them. Quickly, she hauls her leg back over the broomstick and speeds off, lost above the treetops in an instant.

“Hey!” Kirara yells, picking up a stone to hurl it uselessly in the girl’s direction, but she’s long gone. “Mother fucker!”

“Did we know that they have a witch?” Kinji shields his eyes to stare up at the sky. “Was she on the roster?”

“Fucker! I bet they’re probably cheating,” Kirara fumes.

“Did she use some kind of technique?” he asks, looking down at himself like he can tell. “Is that what that was?”

“That was her technique. She got sent ahead here as a scout, I bet.” She never stopped looking above them, at the afterimage of that shadow. “We’d probably better get out of here.”

If Kinji has an answer to that, it’s swallowed by him getting hit in the stomach with the approximate speed and strength of a steam engine. The force of the blow is so terribly visceral for a split second that Kirara thinks she hears bones breaking, before physics takes its course and sends him tumbling to the ground a solid few meters away. He’s lucky he doesn’t hit any trees. 

“Alright,” his assailant says, putting his hands on his hips. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

The man—and this is a man, even though he can’t be older than Kirara—is a solid wall of sheer body barely contained by a crisp undershirt. He has a scar on his face not unlike Utahime-sensei’s, but that’s where any similarity ends between them. He looks down at Kirara with something softer than contempt. She’s so little of a threat that it doesn’t even register to him to take care of her before monologuing. 

“Takada-chan has her first appearance on Poka tonight,” he explains matter-of-factly. “At six PM. She’s being brought into the mainstream despite her niche appeal, and I need to support her in this endeavor so the networks know she’s worth investing in.”

“What?” Kirara asks weakly. Her eyes drift over to Hakari’s motionless body. He’d better be playing dead, but he gets hot so quickly that he might not be able to help himself…

“They’re doing a spot on psychics and ghosts and asked her to host it. Fortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any real curses involved. Takada-chan is capable and intelligent, but she can sometimes also get ahead of herself, so it’d be worrying if she ran into anything real. It’s all staged, though, so she can show off her cute scream when something scary happens.”

“What?”

“You know Takada-chan, right?” He looks distressed at even the idea. “Well, I guess she is a little niche. Hey, what’s your type of woman?”

Kirara doesn’t even bother saying anything anymore. She just stares.

“Or man, if you’re into that kind of thing,” he adds, in a way that feels more than perfunctory. It makes her bristle.

“Back off,” she snaps. Why is she even entertaining this? Is this guy’s technique to be so baffling and inscrutable that it throws off even the most seasoned opponent?

“As long as it’s not boring, I don’t care,” he declares. “You need to have conviction about this kind of thing. Conviction!”

“As if I’d tell you, creep.”

He studies her for a moment, before tilting his head from side to side as if to dislodge a crick in his neck. His muscles and tendons rise to the surface of his skin like he’s about to burst with pure machismo.

“Boring, then,” he sighs, and Kirara touches him before he can continue.

It’s too light to be considered a punch, barely even a tap. It lands solidly in the taut crease between his abs, too central for a kidney, too high for the groin. He blinks at the contact as if it were a particularly bold flea, and then stares at her in unconcealed confusion. It feels good. He should get to know exactly how offputting it is to talk to him.

A spark crackles into life over his head before fading again, too soon for him to look up and see it. He doesn’t have time to look at her when Love Rendezvous takes effect.

All at once, with just as much force as he hit Kinji with, the guy is pushed back to a distance calculated in celestial certainty. The stars are perilously far apart in real life, she knows. If seen from any other angle, they would have nothing to do with one another. It’s only when viewed from this tiny, insignificant rock, at certain places and certain times, that it resolves into a symbol so bright and clear that you’d wonder how else it was ever supposed to exist. 

His heels skid in the ground, sending up sprays of dirt and leaves, and she only allows herself one second of gloating before she goes to check on Kinji, the Ginan to her Mimosa.

She’s glad to see that he’s in pain: he groans weakly when she approaches, trying to bring his feet up and failing to find purchase in the slick leaves. It means that he’s conscious. That’s her tough Kinji, always ready for a second round. In this case, though—

“We’d better get out of here,” Kirara says, kneeling to try and help him up. “C’mon, c’mon. You’re alright.”

“That motherfucker,” he wheezes in response, “is going to get his ass kicked.”

“Yeah, but not right now, okay?”

“I’m gonna make him wish he was never born.”

“Yeah, but not right now. Let’s get some good distance before—”

Something hits Kirara in the back of the head—not hard, barely enough that she notices it, but she still whips her head around to see what the hell it even was. That guy, the gorilla, is digging around in the dirt for rocks. He nods in approval when he sees that she was hit.

“I see,” he says, with enough genuine thought to make her antsy.

“Fuck you!” Kirara calls, flipping him off. Turning back to Hakari, she braces her hands under his shoulders to haul him up, pushing him with all her weight until he stands on his own. As she does, another rock bounces off of her uniform.

“What the hell?” Kinji asks, glancing down.

“It’s that fucking…” Kirara sighs, annoyed. She picks the rock up, reading the residuals of the other guy’s cursed energy on it: he’s strong. This must be the first grade they were talking about. Frowning, she extinguishes the mark of Mimosa on her to apply Imai to the stone. She doesn’t have to even throw it; it jerks itself out of her hand to fly over to him, hitting him square in the forehead. He grunts in pain, and Kirara smiles.

“Now we can go,” she says, winding her arm around Kinji’s shoulders to help him along. She’s disoriented, now, and can’t tell where they are or where they’re going, but they have to put some distance between them and this freak before he rubs his two brain cells together with enough efficiency to figure Love Rendezvous out. Just a bit of distance, and then they can find Okkotsu, and then—

“Oh, I’ve figured it out,” the Kyoto first-grade says, earnestly pleased with himself. Kirara doesn’t even turn to look at him, simply hurrying Kinji along, even though he’s mostly guiding her at this point. She hears the guy clap his hands in what she presumes to be satisfaction.

She manages to take one step more before she realizes the incongruity of the situation, mostly because her mind refuses to process it. It doesn’t make sense. Even within the realm of sorcery, it doesn’t make sense. All the same, it’s irrefutable: Hakari’s frame under her arm has changed considerably, becoming bulkier, stronger, sweatier. He holds his hands close to his body, pressed together in the aftershock of that sound she heard, but she heard it from twenty feet away, so how? How?

The Kyoto student gives her the courtesy of a sincere, benevolent smile before driving his elbow into her nose and sending her into swift unconsciousness.

Kirara hears the sound of a text notification before she’s properly awake.

She isn’t sure what she’s been dreaming about, just that this has to be a part of it. Her thoughts tangle together as they form: something about two twins, five stars, a stone and a path and a pair of dice. Snake eyes. She tastes blood in the back of her throat. Her first conscious feeling is one of nausea. Her second is pure annoyance.

“Who the fuck keeps their ringer on?” she mumbles, voice thick with pain.

When she cracks open her eyes, she’s met with the sight of a drop-tile ceiling, ludicrously out of place in the serene, ancient Kyoto school. That’s right: she’s in Kyoto. The goodwill event. She works apart the knots in her mind. They all split up to find and lure the Kyoto students back to Okkotsu, and she…she—

“Kin-chan!” she gasps, sitting up. She almost smacks her forehead directly into someone else’s face.

The witch stands by her bedside, bent over to study Kirara with those enormous blue eyes of hers. She steps back coolly as Kirara sits up, wrinkling her nose like she’s not the one being a massive creep. She’s still wearing that cartoon witch dress, but her arm and neck are bandaged up, the former in a sling across her chest. It doesn’t make her look less haughty.

“What the hell are you doing?” Kirara asks, affronted. She tastes blood in the back of her throat as she talks, and unconsciously, her hands fly up to her face to assess how badly she’s been hit. Her nose is tender, but remarkably intact, which means—

“I thought you were dead,” the witch says, interrupting Kirara’s thoughts. “You’ve been out for ages.”

“And because you thought I was dead, your idea was to do…that?” Kirara makes a face. “You’re all so weird over here.”

“Hey!” That, of all things, seems to actually upset her. “Not as weird as you freaks from Tokyo! Your pet curse threw me around like a ragdoll,” she complains, gesturing at her bandaged arm for emphasis. “My broom broke…”

Kirara snorts. This is not the right response.

“It’s not funny!” the girl snaps.

“Weird,” Kirara says. “You look all cute, but you’re really a little shit.”

“Whatever. At least I got to contribute things before I got knocked out,” she sniffs. “Which one are you, anyways? I know you’re not Okkotsu, but there’s so many of you weirdos…”

“Hoshi Kirara.” Kirara feels around her face again, frowning. “They didn’t tell us Kyoto had a witch.”

“And they didn’t tell us Tokyo had a bunch of annoying jerks. I’m Nishimiya Momo, and I’m not a witch,” the witch says haughtily. 

“Right.”

“Anyways, I have to fix my broom before the solos tomorrow,” Nishimiya complains, stepping back to sit down on the adjacent bed. Now that Kirara looks around, she can see they’re in a makeshift medical bay, filled with partitions and ancient-looking equipment. “It’s the only way we can salvage this stupid competition…”

“Wait, did you guys lose?” Kirara asks, perking up.

“It just got called,” Ieiri Shoko says, pushing the door open with her back to keep her gloved hands clean. It’s the most consideration Kirara has ever seen from the doctor, but maybe she’s just trying to seem professional as a guest of the sister school. She looks about as well-rested as she ever does.

“Ieiri-san!” Kirara brightens even further. Ieiri is her favorite school staff member, which is saying very little when the competition is Gojo, Kusakabe, and Yaga. (Well, she likes Yaga, too. His cursed corpses are really cute.) “I didn’t realize you were going to be here.”

“Of course. This is an event where the object is to hurt other people quite badly,” she says drily. “They can’t do without me. I’ve instructed Nanami and everyone else in Tokyo to not get hurt in my absence, because it’d be a hassle to have to go back and forth.”

“Ah, that makes sense. There’s really nobody else who can use reverse cursed technique?” Kirara asks, a little doubtful. Nishimiya huffs.

“Of course not. It’s really rare, and even the people who can do it can’t usually use it on other people,” she explains, like it should be obvious. Maybe it is. Kirara likes cutting class too much to be sure.

“Nishimiya-san is right. Oh, how are you feeling, by the way?” Ieiri asks, glancing over at Momo like she forgot she was around. 

“Fine, just achey,” she sighs. “When can I get out of these bandages? I’m healed, right?”

“Don’t strain yourself too much,” Ieiri warns. “I can heal you, but that doesn’t mean the pain goes away or anything.”

“Well, we have the solo battles, don’t we?” Nishimiya pouts, settling back onto the bed. “I can’t not strain myself forever.”

“Dr. Ieiri knows what’s best,” Kirara advises.

“Shut up. You’re so annoying,” Nishimiya sniffs.

“Hey, both of you—quit it,” Ieiri says, waving a clipboard at them without looking. “Thanks for trying to suck up to me, Hoshi-kun.”

“Worth a shot,” Kirara sighs, leaning back against the pillow with her hands behind her head. “Where’s Kinji?”

“Don’t you mean Kin-chan?” Nishimiya asks, adopting a sickly, mocking tone. Kirara glares at her. She wills her face not to go hot. 

“Should be right behind me,” Ieiri answers. “Finding everyone and getting them back here is the trouble.”

“If someone hadn’t broken my broom, I’d usually be doing it.” Nishimiya sounds so genuinely forlorn that it negates whatever snotty attitude she’s trying to have.

“Wait, what’d you say happened?” Kirara asks, curious, before being interrupted.

“I’m really sorry!” comes muffled from the hallway, seconds before the door gets banged open with much less care than Ieiri entered with.

The muscly Kyoto student appears in the blink of an eye, moving too fast for how big he is—and how injured he seems to be, with an open wound on his side that flexes open with every ragged breath. Kinji definitely didn’t do that. Kirara struggles to think of who even would, until she notices the much smaller, visibly unharmed Okkotsu under the guy’s arm like a stuffed toy. Ostensibly, he’s supporting him, but it sure doesn’t seem that way. His whiny, stuttering voice, always apologizing: yes, that makes some degree of sense.

“Todo!” Nishimiya says, jumping up to look at him. “You big idiot, you lost?”

“It’s all in the fight!” so-called Todo boasts, hoisting Okkotsu up by his collar. “And fighting a worthy opponent means you never lose!”

“That’s not true! We literally lost!”

“I’m really sorry,” Okkotsu says again, this time towards Nishimiya, who huffs and turns her head away.

“Where’s everyone else?” she sniffs, crossing her arms—or trying to, before she remembers her sling. Todo only shrugs, and she groans.

“Yo, Okkotsu,” Kirara adds, waving her hand in front of his face. “Where’s Kinji?”

“I think I sprained my wrist,” he answers, miserable, and Kirara rolls her eyes, pushing past the both of them to leave.

“Hey,” Ieiri calls sternly, in the middle of putting on fresh gloves to deal with the spreading amount of blood and gore that’s loudly taking up her makeshift clinic. “I didn’t clear you to go.”

“I’m fine!” Kirara calls back. “I’ll be fine! I’ll bring Kinji back!”

Ieiri doesn’t even have time to protest before she’s gone, like a shooting star.

In the end, Hakari is only put on the same concussion protocol as Kirara, though they can’t really afford any more treatment than sleeping it off for the night, because solo battles are the second day and they really, really can’t afford to lose him or anyone else. He seems too embarrassed to talk much about what happened after Kirara got knocked out, which she hates. She really can’t stand that kind of macho posturing, especially when it deprives her of a good story. He sleeps in the infirmary that night, and Kirara only doesn’t rest at his bedside because of the watchful eye of that Nishimiya Momo.

She’s so irritating that it occupies Kirara’s mind. She’s the worst kind of person: a weakling who picks on other weaklings to get a sense of superiority. After all, she lost. She lost quicker than Kirara did, it seems like. That snotty little punk! 

Fortunately, they basically never see the Kyoto students outside of this event, and even more fortunately, the luck of the draw paired Kirara against the Kamo second year. The other two are so repellant that she couldn’t even stand to look at them, she’s sure. 

“Are you ready?” Kinji asks, when she swings by the infirmary in the morning to collect him. (Going separately doesn’t occur to either of them.) 

“Yeah, sure,” she answers ambivalently, making an OK sign with her thumb and forefinger. “I mean, ready as you can be for this kind of thing. Did you end up seeing what that Kamo guy could do yesterday?”

“Nah,” Kinji says, shrugging, which is more of an explanation than he’s bothered to give so far. “Watch your blood, I guess.”

They trek across the immaculate greens and stones of Kyoto’s campus. Today, the sky remains gray and ashen, leaden with rain. Maybe it’ll be a good thing. Maybe it’ll fuck with Kamo’s blood technique, or Nishimiya’s stupid broom. For now, a cool wind blows across the landscape. Kirara wants to tuck under Kinji’s arm, into his jacket, but not here and now. It feels wide-open, like they can see for miles even through the trees. 

As such, they see the cluster of people outside of the training grounds a few minutes before they actually arrive, eventually forgoing the winding, auspicious paths to track mud across the landscaping. She’s not especially sorry. 

“Hey!” someone calls loudly, waving, and Kirara brightens and quickens her steps seeing who it is.

“Maki!” 

The Tokyo first years form a tight knot against the wind, with Zen’in Maki stepping out to gesture them over. 

“Hey,” Kinji greets, taking his hand out of his pocket to wave back. “We met your sister here, so I was worried it was her. She’s a real bitch, isn’t she?”

“Hey, fuck you,” Maki huffs. “Where do you get off talking like that about women? She is,” she concedes.

“Kombu,” Inumaki says, flashing a peace sign.

“That’s just not nice,” Yuta huffs, perhaps emboldened by his friends being around. 

“Are you guys here to spectate?” Kirara asks

“Yup!” Panda makes a big circle over his head with his furry arms. “So you’d better not disappoint!”

“Did you guys take a plane?” Kinji jerks a thumb at Panda.

“Okaka.”

“Train,” Maki elaborates.

“How’s that work with the big guy?”

“I’m a kigurumi,” Panda says, wiggling his arms, still in the same pose. “A kigurumi!”

“Ah, I need to take a picture!”

Gojo’s loud voice trills from behind them, and they all turn to look as he indeed snaps a flurry of photos with his phone. Instead of Utahime by his side, it’s some middle schooler, albeit a very gloomy looking middle schooler, with messy hair like Okkotsu’s.

“Wait, where’s the third years?” Gojo asks, only seeming to realize after a few seconds of this process. “This is such a bad photo!”

“Hey, why’s Megumi here?” Maki asks, gesturing at the kid.

“He’s going to be starting at the school next year, so I’m giving him a sneak peak of what he has to look forward to!”

Megumi, to his credit, only looks even more unhappy at the prospect. 

“The third years are looking at the new schedule,” Panda answers, politely ignoring the various detours in the conversation. “They said there’s been changes in the lineup. Everyone’s swapped around.”

“Eh, really?” Kinji sighs, rubbing his forehead. “That sucks. Miss Jiji’s Delivery Service was gonna be a free win…”

“Kiki,” Megumi says.

“Huh?”

“Wait, really?” Kirara gasps, the news finally catching up to her (only mildly) concussed mind. “Wait! Wait, that’s terrible!”

She takes off in a flurry of footsteps, the rest of the Tokyo entourage lagging sluggishly behind her. Sure enough, there’s a cluster of people around a poster pinned to one of the posts at the training field. She has to stand on her tiptoes to see over, she realizes with dread, Mechamaru’s shoulder. 

“I guess it’s for the best,” Zen’in Mai muses, leaning against the post to take a closer look. “Momo was gonna get killed by that meathead.”

The solo battle schedule, written neatly on a grid, indeed differs from the one they were given at the start of the event. Now, it leads with a shuffled third-year lineup, followed by Okkotsu versus Todo Aoi, and then Kinji versus Kamo Noritoshi, which means—

“Oh, this is bullshit!” Kirara exclaims, and it must have been a little too loud, because everyone turns to look at her. She feels her face flush. Fortunately, an even noisier distraction overtakes the group.

“There you are!” Todo Aoi booms, reaching across Inumaki and Maki to pick Okkotsu up by the collar again. Okkotsu looks briefly afraid, and then mostly resigned, something of a ragdoll. “We’ll have a legendary battle, my friend!”

“Friend?” Kinji repeats, sounding out the English syllables. “Okkotsu, what’d you do to this guy?”

“Wait,” Kirara interrupts, “you changed the schedule!?”

Todo doesn’t give her the time of day, which she irrationally, absurdly connects to giving him a bad answer yesterday. He only carries Okkotsu off to where the other second years are warming up: a skinny, sick-looking guy that must be Kamo Noritoshi (is that really his name?), and Nishimiya Momo.

If nothing else, Nishimiya looks just as disgusted as Kirara feels. 

Kirara bounces her leg anxiously as they sit on the wooden bleachers and watch the solo battles. Of course she has to go last, so she’s dreading it the entire time, as their seniors lose and win and draw against the Kyoto third years. She and Kinji sit in front of Yaga and the other principal, which doesn’t help her antsiness. She has to focus, especially if she wants to use her technique, but she can’t. She feels like her face hasn’t gotten any less red.

Then it’s Okkotsu’s turn, which means that Kinji leaves her to go warm up, and she’s left alone in the wind as the Kyoto principal’s disparaging commentary filters down in fragments to her. Below her, the Zen’ins bicker as Miwa and Mechamaru try to ignore them, and Utahime cozies up to Ieiri, who has her medical bag open and ready, and Inumaki plays some elaborate phone game with Panda, and Nishimiya sits with her hands tightly together in her lap, and Gojo explains to the kid exactly how this all goes down. 

“Three solid hits, and you’re out,” Gojo says, drawing a finger across his neck, complete with gross choking noises.

“I just don’t get how that works,” Megumi says flatly. “And you’re not explaining it.”

“Well, if you must know,” Gojo answers, heaving a sigh like it’s the most inconvenient thing ever, “it’s about tracking cursed energy. In the same way we can see the curses moving around during the main event, we can track when someone has been hit by monitoring the little bit of cursed energy that rubs off when you hit someone.”

Kirara perks up. 

“So the goal is to block using your own cursed energy, while you try and use your own and catch the other guy off guard,” he continues. There’s the crack of hands clapping, and Kirara can hear Okkotsu yelp even from the nosebleeds. “Like that.” 

“What if you don’t have cursed energy?” Megumi asks, which strikes Kirara as a stupid question, but Gojo hums thoughtfully all the same.

“Dunno. We’ll figure something out. Ooh!” he says brightly. “Look at that!”

An enormous, twisted arm reaches up from the shadows underneath Todo Aoi to claw at the broad expanse of his back, and Gojo whistles. 

“There’s a point,” he says.

A crow caws. Kirara smiles. 

Kinji’s bout against Kamo is disappointingly uneventful. It’s an easy win, as truly scary as Blood Manipulation is to see in the flesh (so to speak), and Kinji doesn’t let himself get hit once. He doesn’t even have to use his full domain (from the looks of it, at least—a cool mist is coming in, fogging up most of the field), which means that next year, they’ll still have an ace up their collective sleeve. Both he and Kamo almost pass out from blood loss, which provides an interesting delay to the final match while Ieiri and some other middle schooler triage the injuries. Kirara wants to be by his side, but she has to take care of something first.

“This is such a mood killer,” Nishimiya sighs as they walk onto the field together. Her broom appears to be fixed—or maybe it’s another one, Kirara’s not sure—as does her arm. 

“You’re telling me,” Kirara grumbles, stretching her arms over her head.

“I was going to beat that dumbass.”

“Hey,” she warns, with a sharp glance over at Nishimiya.

“What, like he’s not stupid?” Nishimiya scoffs, hopping back a few steps once they reach the center of the field. There were starting spots marked on the ground at one point, but now the grass is deeply scored with the scars of previous fights, Rika-chan and Kin-chan alike. Kirara also takes a measured handful of steps backwards, keeping a wary eye on her opponent.

“I’m sure your buddy Kamo doesn’t think he’s all that stupid.”

“Seriously?” Nishimiya sighs, planting her broom’s bristles into the ground so she can lean on it. “Nori-chan’s a pushover. I bet even you could beat him.”

“I bet I could, too.”

Someone calls from the sidelines to get ready, and they both straighten back up, staring one another down. 

“Hoshi Kirara…” Nishimiya makes a face, plainly disgusted. “Such a cute name for an uncute guy.”

“And you have such an old-fashioned name for a little kid,” Kirara says, and she can instantly tell that it strikes a nerve, but—what the hell, Nishimiya struck a nerve, too. She can’t even hide it. She reaches into her jacket, waiting for the whistle. When it comes, she’s blown away by a wave of wind.

She only barely manages to stay on her feet, but that’s only after stumbling backwards a few paces, losing her balance all the way. Surely that doesn’t count as a direct hit, right? She doesn’t hear any kind of whistle, but she’s also lost all sense of her senses, tumbling around. She only barely sees Nishimiya coming in hot on that stupid broom of hers and ducks just in time, avoiding being bowled over. She grasps at the bristles, feeling a few pieces of straw come away in her hand, and she sighs.

“Nice try,” Nishimiya says derisively, but she’s clearly pissed as she turns back around, wind whipping at her dress and hair. It’s like she doesn’t know. Wait—does she not know? Surely that monster Todo must’ve told her: they have to have shared information, the way the Tokyo students did. 

Then again, Todo only seems to have eyes for his own business. 

Well, Kirara won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. A star blooms at the base of Nishimiya’s broom and on Kirara’s forehead, and Nishimiya’s attempt to cut back over to swipe at Kirara again is aborted as she sails backwards, no matter how much she strains to move even an inch towards Kirara. She tries not to enjoy the sight. 

“Okay!” Kirara says brightly, reaching into her jacket again. “That’s more like it!”

They said all weaponry used in the exchange event had to be strictly nonlethal, so the little piece of flat metal that sails through the air has blunted edges and barely resembles a star anymore like it used to, though Nishimiya still grunts in pain when it strikes her just below the ribcage. Kirara winces, too. She almost wants to apologize, but what’s the point of that?

A crow caws somewhere to her right, and the whistle blows, which is how she puts two and two together: right. There’s one independent sorcerer who is sufficiently divested from both schools, while still having the means to supervise something like this. 

“One point,” Kirara says under her breath, but then Nishimiya is running at her, broom abandoned on the ground, buoyed by wind from somewhere. Her little fist makes contact with Kirara’s chest, and it stings more than it should. The hot embarrassment hurts more than anything. The confusion supersedes even that. A crow caws. 

How? Wouldn’t the broom’s cursed energy perfectly match Nishimiya’s? Whatever her technique is, it has to apply to her broom. There’s no spark on her head as Kirara wheels around to face her, though, at least not until Kirara gets her shit together and Acrux blazes into existence, and they’re pushed apart again. 

Now that she has a moment to feel for it, the broom is devoid of cursed energy: a dead object, her star attaching to nothing at all. How, though? Even a regular, mundane object—which the broom evidently is not—carries over some cursed energy whenever a sorcerer handles it, which is why the throwing star was able to be tagged by Love Rendezvous. The broom is completely inert, until it isn’t.

Once the star marking fades, it shivers back to life, and Kirara has the good sense to get out of the way before it zips itself over to Nishimiya like a cartoon. She catches it easily with one hand, looking annoyed.

“Can you stop wasting my time?” Nishimiya asks. 

“What?” Kirara stares at her incredulously, trying to work it out.

“I just mean that it’d be easier for me if you just gave up now, and we’d both be able to get inside before it rains.” Nishimiya tosses her broom to her other hand, trying to take a step forward—which of course doesn’t work, and she huffs. “What, is your technique to play keep-away with yourself?”

“Something like that,” she answers. “I’m not gonna lie down and take it.”

“Too bad,” Nishimiya titters. “It’ll hurt a lot worse standing up.”

This time, Kirara is ready for the rush of wind, but she isn’t ready for the dirt to cleave between her feet, like Rika has taken a claw to the soft earth. The fog is even worse now, but the gust clears it enough for Kirara to see Nishimiya finish scraping her broom against the grass.

“Hold still,” she complains, pulling the broom back.

“Fuck no!” Kirara yelps, hopping back and tossing another throwing star in Nishimiya’s direction. It’s only when it curves away, almost swerving all the way back towards Kirara, that she realizes her mistake. 

Objects retain cursed energy, even ones that don’t possess their own. Kirara gave herself the sign of Ginan, which means that she can’t toss something directly back in the hierarchy towards Acrux. She smacks her forehead in frustration, where the spark is, and sighs. Right. All she has to do is deactivate the technique on herself, and—

The moment she does, Nishimiya launches forward towards her, and this time it’s too quick to dodge. The pointed end of the broom hits Kirara in the sternum, bowling her over, and the rush of blood in her ears obfuscates any noise, but it’s obvious that it’d be a point even so. It’s hard to so much as think with the wind knocked out of her like this, but she manages to tag herself with a more favorable star: Imai. The first in the order, the closest to all living things. This is what she should’ve done from the start. 

“I’m starting to get it,” Nishimiya says, pointing a finger at Kirara’s hand. “It’s something to do with that, right? You didn’t have a tattoo before.”

Kirara doesn’t even have to look, and she won’t give Nishimiya the satisfaction of doing so, though she’s sure her expression tells it all. Shit! Kinji is always telling her she has no poker face!

“Yeah,” Nishimiya muses, giving up on trying to approach Kirara, leaning on her broom again. She looks down at herself, peeling back the sleeve of her dress. Kirara feels woozy. That fucking hit must’ve done more damage than she thought. Still, there it is, in blazing glory on her shoulder: Acrux. Nishimiya wrinkles her nose. “What does that even mean?”

“They must not teach you anything down here,” Kirara says, tossing one metal star and then another. Nishimiya ducks them with embarrassing ease, still lost in thought.

“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter,” Nishimiya sighs, readying her stance again, broom buried down in the dust. “It doesn’t seem like it does much against ranged combat—at least something that doesn’t have a projectile. Wind Scythe,” she starts, and already, her tone is laden with purpose and cursed energy, “relies on pressurized air. By using Cursed Tool Manipulation, I can—”

There’s one thunk, and then another. Somewhere in the heavy mist, a crow caws twice, and they both listen as the whistle bleats once, twice—and then again, a long, high noise, signaling the end of the bout.

“What?” Nishimiya asks, too stunned to even be in much pain. The throwing stars fall into the dirt at her back, the sparks animating them fizzling out as Kirara dismisses her technique.

“I always thought that the whole revealing the technique thing was stupid,” Kirara sighs, mussing up her own hair. The adrenaline hasn’t even begun to go away, so even her feigned attempt at being casual courses with electricity. Fever, Kinji calls it. She isn’t sure that she’s ever known what he’s talking about before now. “I mean, I get that it makes you stronger, but unless your technique involves dealing damage directly, it’s kinda silly, right? It just leaves you open.”

“What?” Nishimiya repeats. “What happened?”

“Good match, anyways!” Kirara salutes her breezily, turning away to limp through the fog back towards the crowd. “I’ll see you around, Momo-chan.”

By the time Nishimiya starts to bluster up an indignant reply, Kirara is gone.

As she approaches the benches, however, she can already tell that something is wrong. The fever fades into the damp cold, and she hears people arguing, her steps picking up quicker and quicker as she realizes, and quicker still when she can identify who it is.

“Are you out of your fuckin’ mind?” Kinji spits, soaked in blood. It’s nothing new, and not even all that remarkable, except for the fact that he’s yelling at Gakuganji Yoshinobu. Kirara feels her heart drop into her stomach.

“Is this how you’re training up sorcerers, Yaga?” Gakuganji says, turning aside to speak to his fellow principal, who seems as taciturn as ever but still somehow embarrassed. Everyone else is fanned out around Kinji and the old man, in varying stages of disbelief. Okkotsu stands at Kinji’s elbow, anxious and ignored. “This kind of entitled attitude, like they don’t have to follow the rules—and that language…”

“Hey, grandpa, what’re you saying?” Gojo says, smiling. Kirara can tell that he’s tense: angry, even. She doesn’t have much of a metric for these things, though. He’s always treated the two of them kindly.

“It isn’t an established technique,” Gakuganji sniffs, gripping his cane tightly. “You were already on thin ice by letting that monster compete, and now—”

“Hey, you don’t have to count my score,” Okkotsu pipes up desperately. He’s definitely stressed. His cursed energy is like a cloud around him. “I’m sorry! I d-don’t have to compete! I just don’t get the problem with Hakari-senpai—”

“There is no problem,” Kinji says through gritted teeth. “Nah, let him go ahead, Okkotsu. I wanna hear what he has to say for himself.”

“Because it isn't an established technique,” the principal continues, “we can’t verify the result. Of course, his opponent appeared to be hit, but how can we be sure?”

“You want me to do it again?” Kinji snaps. “You wanna feel for yourself?”

“The technique appears to be illusory in nature, like some kind of partial domain—”

“That’s not—”

“Which is, of course, against the rules.”

“Hey, grandpa,” Gojo says, still smiling, “you didn’t say that. Anyways, didn’t I use mine when I was in school?”

“The rule’s there because of you,” Yaga answers, exhausted. “And it hasn’t come up since.”

“That’s actually bullshit,” Kinji says. “He was hit because he got fucking hit! Everyone saw it, yeah? Didn’t it count at the time?”

“Well, mistakes happen,” Mei Mei says coolly, stepping away from her spot on the sidelines. As Kirara glances over at her, she sees Nishimiya emerge from the mists on the field, clutching her broom. Kamo Noritoshi looks as though he’s going to say something, but he just looks away, jaw set. Utahime wears a similar expression.

“The score is invalid,” Gakuganji dismisses. “I’ll do you a favor and count it as a draw, even though Kamo-san would’ve outscored you.”

“You’re out of your goddamn mind!” Kinji confirms, incredulous.

“Hey,” Kirara whispers, stepping forward to grab his arm. “Quit it. We still won, didn’t we? I won,” she says, and hates how plaintive it sounds, begging for that little bit of recognition. His skin is hot. Fever. The bad kind: the kind that burns out of control. 

“Oh, Principal Old Man and I are going to have a nice chat about it,” Gojo says lightly, reaching over to rub Gakuganji’s bare head. “But he’s right when he says Tokyo won. Mei, there was nothing hinky or weird about that last match, right?”

“Nope,” Mei Mei confirms, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “Hoshi-kun won fair and square, two hits to three.”

“So, that’s…” Gojo makes a show of counting on his fingers. “Three wins, one loss, two draws. I think that’s a win, isn’t it? Teacher, please check my math!”

“Satoru,” Yaga warns. 

“Fuck you,” Kinji says, and for a moment, Kirara is sure he’s going to shove Gakuganji, but he doesn’t. All he does is take a deep breath and stalk away, back towards the buildings. Everyone stands in that silence for a moment, and not a single person is happy. The sky opens up. It rains.

Dinner is a hasty, awkward affair, and Kirara quickly brings two plates of the catered food back to the boys’ dorms, praying not to run into Kamo—or worse, Todo Aoi. 

“Kin-chan,” she calls lightly, balancing both plates in one hand to open the door, shutting it behind her with her hip. Kinji is lying flat on his back on one of the beds in the room, an arm thrown over his eyes. She wonders briefly if he’s asleep, but he’s not, and he’s never able to fool her, poker face be damned. “Kin-chan, come on,” she coaxes, setting the food down on the desk.

“I could fucking kill them.”

“Yeah, me too,” Kirara sighs, sitting at the foot of the bed, unbuttoning her jacket to toss it onto the desk chair, on top of Kinji’s. “But we still won, right? Like Gojo-sensei said.”

“Does that shit matter? I mean, really. We’re gonna get out of here and it’s always going to happen like this.”

Here, as in Kyoto, as this campus and the wet field and the winding pathways, but also here as in this strange and wonderful world that sometimes feels just as mundane as the one they came from. Kirara nods. It’s always going to happen like this.

Carefully, she climbs over him until her full weight lies on his body, face tucked into his shoulder, arms around his neck and head. After a moment, he hugs her back. She expected him to be hot again, hotter than fire, but he’s cold and dull. It makes her want to cry. They stay quiet like that for a long time, listening to the rain outside intensify and the other’s heartbeat slow.

“You said you won?” Kinji says eventually, voice low, just for her to hear.

“Yep,” Kirara confirms, though it feels like days ago already. Just thinking about it again gets her energy back up. “...Yeah, oh my god, I did! My first solo match!”

“Hell yeah!” Kinji laughs, squeezing her tight. “I knew you would! We couldn’t see much, and then…”

That dark mood creeps back in, so Kirara does her best to banish it, laughing too. It’s always going to happen like this, but maybe that’s fine, if it means that she can stay like this: stay with him. She’s seen the loneliness of special grades. Gojo Satoru doesn’t have someone like Kirara by his side, and Kinji likes power more than he likes anything, which she worries sometimes includes even her, but not now. Always, maybe. Like cold stars in the sky. It’s nice, isn’t it? 

“It was great,” she confirms. “She didn’t even hit me once.”

“...Didn’t Mei Mei say—”

“And you should’ve seen—” Kirara devolves into giggles, burying her face in his neck, kicking her feet. “You should’ve seen her fucking face! Her cute little face! Like she didn’t even know it was over! Man, I bet she’s pissed tonight. I bet they’re all pissed, because I won. They didn’t even know who I was, and I won!”

“That’s right,” Kinji says fondly. “Attagirl.” And then, after a moment: “Cute?”

“Hey,” Kirara groans, pushing up onto her hands to give him a look. “Not cute cute. Just, y’know—she definitely thinks she’s cute.”

“Do you think she is?” Kinji teases, and she kicks his shin. 

“You’re such a pig! You’re such a weirdo! I hate her!”

“No, it’d be great,” he says thoughtfully. “Like that GL last season with the rival school councils…”

“I hate you!” 

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” he says decisively. “I mean, since she’s not gonna come back from this one, since you beat her so bad. And she didn’t even get a hit in, besides the two that she got in.”

“That’s right,” Kirara starts, but they both freeze at a knock on the door. 

Kinji tosses her aside onto the adjacent bed in an instant, and she has to swallow her yelp and act casual, like she’s definitely been here the whole time, yes sir, whoever you are, sir. Kamo? Todo? Mechamaru? If the robot sleeps in the dorms like a regular student, she’s gonna lose her shit.

“Yeah, what’s up?” Kinji calls, a moment too late.

The door edges open a crack, and Okkotsu peeks in, brow furrowed. Right. Okkotsu.

“Hi,” he says, a little awkwardly.

“Fuck do you want?” Kinji asks, crossing his arms.

“Um—nothing!” Yuta squeaks, hiding behind the door as much as he can. “I j-just thought I’d say that—you both did a really good job! And I’m glad it went so well!”

“You call that going well?”

“I’m s-sorry! But you did a good job! That’s all I mean! Sorry!”

“Fine,” Kirara scoffs, also crossing her arms. “You too, I guess.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t give you more shit,” Kinji points out, sharp, and Okkotsu seems to deflate even more.

“Yeah…” He sighs, shoulders slumping. “I guess they just didn’t want something bad to happen.”

They all dwell on it for a moment: that indelicate use of euphemism, the blatant truth it barely conceals. Power. Kirara can feel how hungry Kinji is.

“But—um, that’s all, I guess!” Yuta chirps, moving to close the door before Kinji interrupts again.

“Hey, what’s with the stupid look on your face?” he asks, bored.

“The…” Okktosu touches a hand to his cheek, confused, before relaxing and laughing nervously. “Oh! Right. I just thought I heard someone else in here.”

They take the plane back to Tokyo with little time for sightseeing, and whatever dark secret between the second years continues to fester, but worse things foment just outside of their knowledge. They aren’t around when Geto Suguru darkens the school’s doorstep, but they hear all about it: the unmistakable charge he throws down, the date that looms closer on the calendar with every new day. It seems like all anyone does anymore is make plans. The exchange event becomes a bad memory. 

The higher-ups don’t seem so suspicious of Hakari now that they need every sorcerer they have, so even he isn’t exempt from preparations. Kirara isn’t, either, but she has some more leeway, and so while everyone stronger than her is stuck in endless meetings, she’s free to do what she wants. It’s a novel idea. 

Mostly, she just wanders around Shibuya, window shopping in the designer stores. Maybe when she has money—when something different happens. It’s fun just looking, anyways, she tells herself. Admittedly, it’s also fun getting out of that fucking school for an afternoon, though it swiftly becomes less fun when it starts to pour down rain.

She takes refuge inside of a shopping center—a new one, refurbished after it was occupied by curses—weaving in and out of the shops. Maybe she’ll get Kinji something, though he tends to sell anything that’s not nailed down for pachinko money, so even the expensive stuff he buys for himself has a short shelf life. It seems like he doesn’t want to hold onto anything; if it won’t last anyways, may as well get some return on his investment. It happens less with the little trinkets she finds him. She’s not stupid enough to think that it’ll never happen, though.

She stares, lost in thought, at a display of watches in one of those half-trashy department stores that pop up like dandelions among the shopping malls of Tokyo. It takes her a moment to realize that, through the glass distortion, someone is staring back.

“Fuck!” she yelps, jumping, and Nishimiya jumps, too.

She’s really unmistakable, looking like that: though at least her hair is down, so she looks a little less silly than usual. She’s in uniform, though, which looks cute and chic and not like a uniform at all, compared to the way everyone else has to wear it. She turns to go, and Kirara logically should let her do it, but she’s already weaving behind the display case to chase her.

“Hey, what the hell?” Kirara asks, waving in disbelief. Momo groans. She seems to think long and hard about it before turning around. 

“What do you want?” she asks stiffly, rolling her eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” Kirara echoes, hands on her hips. “I’m the one who lives here!”

“In Shibuya?”

“Well—you know…” Kirara puffs her cheeks out, glaring at Momo, who grins at her own stupid joke. 

“I’m here for the same reason everyone is, idiot. We had a meeting earlier to figure out the Kyoto strategy, which meant coming all the way up here for some fucking reason,” Momo sighs. 

“Oh.” Right. The shadow looms a little closer, a little darker. 

“Yeah.”

“...So you came shopping?” Kirara asks, rubbing the back of her neck. Her hair’s getting a little too long: it’s kind of itchy.

“It’s a lot better here than in Kyoto,” Nishimiya explains, shrugging. “May as well.”

“For…” Kirara looks back at the display case. “Watches?”

Nishimiya turns her nose up, not seeming to find it funny.

“Earrings. And maybe something for my dad,” she concedes. “I’m visiting next month.”

“Visiting?” 

Against both of their wills, they both independently realize that this is a conversation rather than a hostile encounter, and they both start walking.

“He’s overseas,” Momo says, seemingly in disbelief that she’s doing so.

“Right. Huh.”

“—Are you some kind of caveman that only says one word at a time?”

“Hey, fuck you,” Kirara huffs. “There’s three right there. Are you still holding a grudge over the exchange event?”

“God, don’t remind me,” Momo complains, rolling her eyes again. “You guys are the sorest winners I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s not like that,” Kirara says hotly. “You all suck for not saying anything.”

“What’s there to say? We already lost. How did you do that, by the way?”

Kirara blinks.

“Do what?”

Momo grimaces, making a vague gesture at the department store around them. 

“At the event,” she clarifies. “Did you cheat?”

“Huh?” Kirara laughs, bright and bubbly and genuinely surprised, entirely despite herself. “Seriously? That’s the only way you can see someone beating you?”

“I mean it!”

“Besides, it’s not cheating if you win. Not in sorcery. And…” Kirara winks. “I won’t tell.”

“You’re the actual worst!” Momo sighs, ducking aside to look at a rack of earrings. “Why are you here, anyways? You obviously don’t live here in the jewelry section.”

Kirara fumbles for an answer, and she can tell it takes too long.

“Watches,” she lands on. “Something for Kin-chan.”

She can tell that something about that answer was even worse even before Nishimiya replies.

“Do you have to call that big idiot such a cute name? It’s seriously weird.”

“Uh, it’s just…” Kirara winces. “It’s a joke.”

“Right.”

“Besides, you’re one to talk about cute names,” she adds quickly. “I swear, it’s all ‘Nori-chan,’ ‘Mai-chan’ with you. And they’re both dickheads!”

“Hey! Don’t say that kind of thing about Mai,” Nishimiya snaps, and it’s more vicious than anything they’ve said before. Kirara blinks, holding her hands up, as much as it’s in her nature to double down.

“Jeez. Whatever. Sorry. Her own sister doesn’t like her, though, y’know?”

“She’s been through a lot,” Momo sniffs. 

“So has Kinji.”

“It’s different for girls.”

It is. Kirara looks away. 

“Right. Sorry.”

“I mean, you get it, right?”

That gives Kirara pause. It’s innocuous and loaded all at once, like she can’t answer it for the shrapnel, like it’ll explode in her face like a thousand metal stars. It’s a mean thing to say. Or: maybe it’s perfectly normal, because of course Kirara would know, everyone knows about misogyny, and she’s taking it too personally, she always takes it too personally. She should just apologize and say yeah, obviously, whatever. Women do have it bad. Which she knows objectively. It’s either that or saying something like whatever, fuck you, asshole, and getting into a big fight right here in the mall. Both feel like they close a door.

She’s been looking away, and when she glances back at Momo, her expression is more open than she expected it to be. Her blue eyes are wide and guileless, like she’s a really good liar, but there’s something else there. There’s shrapnel in the asking, not just the answering. Kirara could hurt her badly here, too.

“Yeah,” she says softly instead, instead of any of that. “I do.”

For a moment, that’s all. They reach through the mess and something connects.

“Well, whatever,” Momo says haughtily, and it’s as rude as she’s ever been, but now they both know something, so it’s changed. It tastes different on the wind. “You’re all so vulgar at the Tokyo school. It’s still a terrible thing to say about anyone, no matter what they’ve gone through.”

“Even Kamo?” Kirara asks.

Very seriously, after a few seconds of thought, Momo gestures her down. It isn’t like Kirara is tall by any means, but Momo is even shorter.

“You can say it about Todo,” she whispers, comically confidential, and they both laugh.

They wander around for a little while longer, waiting out the rain, talking aimlessly about nothing. They can’t really discuss the extent of what’s coming in public, so they discuss everything else, from the weather to classwork to the train between Kyoto and Tokyo, to what they’re going to do after they graduate—though even that has to be carefully worked around. They’re staying in the business. They’re going into business in America. It makes them sound awfully professional.

Eventually, Nishimiya stops in front of the jewelry, back where they started, and she sighs.

“I want to get my ears pierced,” she says mournfully.

“Huh?” Kirara squints at her. “...They’re not?”

“Again,” she clarifies. “At least one ear, but maybe both. I just think it’s cool! And…”

Kirara raises her eyebrows, prompting her for more.

“It’s fun. It feels good.” Momo shrugs. “And I hate when people treat me like a little girl, so I think I’ll just keep getting them until they stop.”

“Fair enough.” Kirara shrugs back.

“I’m going to do it!” she decides, before smacking her own cheek. “Ugh, that makes me sound super impulsive and unhinged, doesn’t it?” 

“Eh, well…I don’t think it’s impulsive, since you’ve thought about it,” Kirara offers. “But is that really alright with the school?”

“Huh?” Momo gives her a strange look. “Would it not be?”

“Like, for a dress code, or…”

“They let you wear whatever uniform you want,” she points out.

“But isn’t Kyoto even way more traditional than Tokyo?” Kirara blurts out. “The schools, I mean. That’s all anyone says.”

Momo thinks about it some more, and Kirara feels awful, until she looks back up at her and shrugs.

“It’s not that big of a deal. It’s traditional ‘cause everyone says that it is, and it’s way tougher for girls, but—it’s two little earrings.” Momo’s smile turns conspiratorial. “I mean, even the principal has all those piercings, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s different, ‘cause…”

“What?”

“...I thought it was for, like, something religious,” Kirara mumbles, and she can’t even protest when Momo practically howls laughing.

“Whew!” She wipes her eyes, before gesturing at the counter and the bored attendant there, covered in piercings herself. “I’m just gonna do it. While I’m in Tokyo, and before the world ends.”

It’s a shockingly quick process, and they don’t even make Nishimiya sign anything, which is, for some reason, what Kirara expected to happen. Either that or showing an ID: something where they say yes, you can do this or no, and we’re kicking you out, too. It’s simple. Momo only squirms a little bit in the vinyl chair when the attendant presses the gun to the markings on her ears, just above where they’ve already been pierced, and she bites her lip when the thunk happens, but that’s all. There isn’t even blood.

“See, what do you think?” Nishimiya asks, putting a hand behind her ear to show it off. Kirara leans in, eyes wide. 

“That’s nuts!” she says, appreciative. “You’re gonna be the coolest little girl around.”

Momo swats at her, pouting, but Kirara is laughing, and soon she laughs, too.

“Well,” Momo starts breathlessly after a second, “I’ve gotta get—”

“I want to do it,” Kirara blurts out.

They stare at one another. Kirara has the urge to cover her mouth. 

“Okay?” Momo says, tentative. “Alright? Go ahead. It’s only, like, a couple thousand yen, and then you pay for whatever temporaries you put in there.”

“Okay,” Kirara says, because it felt like she needed permission, and even now, she just stands tense and alert outside of the booth, like she needs something else. Momo sighs. 

“Go, go,” she orders, pushing Kirara towards the employee. “Hurry up. I have to take the train out of here, and Mai-chan and Kasu-chan will be waiting…”

Kirara shells the money out of her school stipend, and sits in the sticky vinyl where Momo did, and feels like she’s going to get kicked out any second now, but the part-time worker just tells her to breathe in, and Kirara leans away.

“Wait,” she says, voice high with worry. “How much does it hurt?”

The employee shrugs.

“Don’t be a baby,” Momo sighs. “It only hurts if you’re super tense, so quit that.”

It’s really hard to quit, though!

Kirara doesn’t say that. Instead, she just squeezes her eyes shut, even when a small, warm hand worms its way under her death grip on the chair’s arm. Momo doesn’t even complain a little bit, even though it probably hurts a lot. The worker tells her to breathe again, and she does, and she hears the thunk, and a little pinch, and she waits for the pain to come.

It doesn’t.

Warily, she cracks open an eye to see what went wrong, but then the attendant is on her other side, breathe again, thunk, pinch, and that’s all. She wants to protest. It can’t be that easy.

“See?” Momo says, ostensibly annoyed but mostly smug. “A baby, like I said. It’s not bad.”

“...Huh.”

“Does that placement look good?” the employee asks, handing her a branded hand mirror, and Kirara is about to say something sarcastic about what the fuck could anyone do about it if it was wrong, but—

It’s stupidly simple, like the process itself. It isn’t some huge change like she maybe dreamed of, somewhere deep down, like it’d fix everything and solve world hunger and the Night Parade and her stupid looking face. She just looks like Hoshi Kirara but with a couple of earrings. (Really, they are a bit uneven.) That’s all it is. That’s all it was ever going to be, and she still feels a lump in her throat, because it’s more than it was before. 

“It looks alright,” she says.

“You took fucking forever,” Mai complains, standing up from where she’s crouched on the ground like a delinquent (very uncute), stretching with a grimace like it hurt her back. “What’s the deal?”

“It’s alright,” Kasumi says reassuringly. She’s holding all of Mai’s bags, and looks pleased as punch to do so. “We’ve just been peoplewatching! I love it in Tokyo!”

“Yeah?” Mai asks disparagingly. “You should’ve gone here, then.”

“Don’t whine,” Momo says, reaching out to poke Mai’s cheek. (She has to lean down, which she does obligingly.) 

“I’m not whining,” Mai replies. “I’m just stating the facts. Did you even get anything? Wait…” She gets up close to Momo’s face in that intense way she has, and even Miwa has to lean in to look, too.

“Oh!” Kasumi gasps. “Your ears!”

“Brand new,” Momo confirms, touching them in demonstration before wincing. “Ow—they’re a little sore…”

“Damn.” Mai whistles. “It looks nice. You’re totally getting punk.”

“Don’t say stuff like that!” Miwa protests, but Momo doesn’t, because it’s a little bit true, and she doesn’t mind. 

“That’s what took extra long,” Momo explains, turning around to head towards the station, hiding the big smile on her face. A figure hurries out of the side entrance, seeing that the rain is gone, and she waves. They hesitate before waving back, smiling awkwardly, all slippery dark hair and loose clothes and pierced ears, and then they round the corner and are gone.

“Who’s that?” Mai asks, not waiting the polite amount of time until the person is far enough away. Miwa grimaces about it, but doesn’t say anything. “Looks familiar…”

“Nah,” Momo answers, lowering her hand. “You don’t know her.”